1. TURKOMAN
2. KIRGHIZ
3. TAJIK
4. SARI
Meanwhile events were taking place in the north which were to render these minor successes valueless,[275] for in A.H. 425 (1034) Hārūn, the Ghaznavide governor of Khwārazm,[276] profiting by the embarrassed position of Mas`ūd, threw off his allegiance. Although the immediate result of this step was an interval of disorder, during which Hārūn was murdered, his successor persisted in a policy of rebellion, and ceased to pay any regard to the court at Ghazna. This event in itself seemed of small importance, but it brought grave results in its train. We are told that the Seljūks, in A.H. 426 (1035), helped Mas`ūd to drive the rest of the Ghuz out of Khorāsān, but the alliance did not survive this campaign; and thus, while Mas`ūd was absent in Ghazna in the following year, we find his lieutenant in Khorāsān engaged in hostilities with the Seljūks. During the same year, A.H. 427 (1036), the Ghaznavide general suffered a severe defeat at the hands of Chakir Beg in the vicinity of Merv. From this event dates the rise of the Seljūks. In A.H. 428 (1037) Merv surrendered to Chakir, and in the following year Toghrul was declared master of Nīshāpūr. Khorāsān was now practically in the hands of the Seljūk brothers. Mas`ūd had been too busily employed with troubles in India to give due attention to the protection of his richest province. At length, in A.H. 431 (1040), he determined to make a final effort to retrieve his losses, and led an army in person against Merv, where he suffered a final and crushing defeat at the hands of Chakir and Toghrul.[277] He still clung to Khorāsān with all the energy of despair. Leaving his son in Balkh, he hastened to India to raise a fresh army. But his influence with his troops had gone, and no sooner had he crossed the Indian frontier than his lawless soldiers began to plunder the treasures which had been accumulated by his illustrious father. When they recovered their senses they “were seized with a dread of punishment, and came to the sudden resolution of reinstating Mohammad,[278] who was a prisoner in the camp.”[279] Mas`ūd was captured, and in the following year, A.H. 433 (1042), murdered by his own nephew. The princes of Ghazna continued to reign until A.H. 555 (1160),—in fact, they outlasted the Seljūks of Central Asia,—but no chief of the dynasty ever attained to the greatness of its earlier representatives. Their hostilities with the Seljūks were finally brought to a close by a treaty concluded in A.H. 451 (1059) between Chakir and Ibrāhīm, the then ruler of Ghazna, who thereby for ever lost the province of Khorāsān.[280]
CHAPTER XVIII
The Seljūks
Toghrul Beg’s career of conquest is admirably epitomised by Gibbon in the 57th chapter of his immortal work. After driving the Ghaznavides back to India, he overthrew the powerful dynasty of the Būyides,[281] and with their fall the whole of Persia passed into the hands of the Turks. “By the conquest of Āzerbāyjān, or Atropatene, he approached the Roman confines, and the shepherd presumed to despatch an ambassador or herald to demand the tribute and obedience of the Emperor of Constantinople.”[282]
The expeditions of these fortunate brothers, Toghrul and Chakir, in their results at all events, more closely resembled the migration of entire peoples than military campaigns. By the year A.H. 440 (1048) Āzerbāyjān, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor were entirely overrun by Turkish bands. Four hundred years before this a huge wave of conquering Arabs and Persians had swept in an easterly direction over all Persia as far as the Oxus and beyond it. We now find a still vaster influx of Turks over the same country, but starting where the other had ended. The first flood-tide took the form of a religious war into the infidel countries, and brought with it the influence of culture and solid learning. The reflex wave was an irresistible migration of savage tribes, who, though well-nigh destitute of any tincture of letters,[283] were still, it must be remembered, the children of Islām. The marks left on the East by the Western wave were ethnographically slight, but psychically of great importance; while precisely the opposite is true of the second immigration. Bokhārā and Balkh became, and for centuries remained, the centres of Mohammedan lore, while Asia Minor and Āzerbāyjān were the permanent abodes of the descendants of the Seljūks. The forces of the two brothers were probably augmented by the westward flow of new bands of Turks, and victory attended them wherever they turned.
In A.H. 449 (1055) Toghrul Beg entered Baghdād, and helped to establish the Caliph Kā´im on his throne.[284]
Toghrul Beg had no male issue. On the approach of death he selected as his successor his nephew Alp Arslān, the son of his deceased brother Chakir. Thus, in the year A.H. 455 (1063), Alp Arslān became lord of a kingdom which extended from the Oxus to the Euphrates, and from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf. One of his first measures was to rid himself of his uncle’s vezīr, and appoint in his stead a man who afterwards bore one of the most exalted names in the history and literature of the East. Hasan ibn `Alī, better known as Nizām ul-Mulk, or Regulator of the State, was born in Tūs in A.H. 408 (1018), and early displayed signs of administrative power. He held office first under the Ghaznavides, and later, at Balkh, under the Seljūks. The post of chief vezīr, which now fell to his lot, he continued to hold for a period of thirty years. He was celebrated alike for justice, tolerance, and literary attainments.[285]
It was under Alp Arslān that the Turks first invaded the Roman Empire.[286] Having temporarily satisfied his ambition in the West,[287] he returned to his capital, and formed the project of crossing the Oxus and invading the countries whence his ancestors had come. His career was, however, cut short in A.H. 465 (1063) by a mortal wound received at the hands of a man whom he had condemned to death.[288] He was succeeded by his son Melik Shāh, whose claims were disputed by several rivals,[289] but these were disposed of with little difficulty. In A.H. 446 (1073) he engaged in warfare with Altagin, the Turkish Khān of Samarkand, who, on hearing of the death of Alptagin, had presumed to lay siege to Tirmiz, a town included in the Seljūks’ realms, though it lay on the right bank of the Oxus.[290] He soon drove the Khān back, and forced him to sue for peace. Melik Shāh apparently remained on peaceful terms with the Turks until A.H. 482 (1089), when, in response to a call from the oppressed inhabitants of Transoxiana, he crossed the great river and made himself master of Bokhārā and Samarkand. Pushing beyond the last-named city, he threatened to invade the territory of the Khān of Kāshghar,[291] who, overcome by fear, consented to recognise the suzerainty of the Seljūks,[292] both in his coins and in the public prayers. At the zenith of his fortunes the great Sultan held sway from the frontiers of China up to the gates of Constantinople. August Müller[293] aptly compares Alp Arslān and Melik Shāh with Trajan and Hadrian. Brilliant as were the military successes of Melik Shāh, they are cast into the shade by his cultivation of the peaceful arts and his sedulous care for the development of his territories. Though five years passed by ere he was firmly established on his throne, the remaining fifteen years of his reign were attended by a degree of internal prosperity, an advance in literature and learning, which will ever associate his name with one of the most brilliant epochs in the history of Islām. There is, however, one great blot on his escutcheon: his treatment of his able and faithful minister, Nizām ul-Mulk. Influenced by lying reports brought to his ears by the enemies of the vezīr, he degraded his devoted servant and indirectly brought about his death. For, shortly after Nizām ul-Mulk’s removal from office, he was murdered by an assassin,[294] employed perhaps by his successor in office, who feared a change in the Sultan’s sentiments, A.H. 485 (1092). Melik Shāh did not long survive the fallen minister. Within a month he was seized with a violent illness, which terminated his life in the thirty-eighth year of his age.
He left four sons, who each in turn succeeded to his throne.[295] The youngest, Mahmūd, was only four years of age when his father died; but the ambition of his mother, the Sultana Khātūn Turkān, placed the crown upon his infant head, and the Caliph Muktadi was prevailed on to have his name mentioned in the public prayers. The Sultana marched to Isfahān, preceded by the corpse of Melik Shāh. Berkiyāruk, the eldest prince,[296] was residing there; but, powerless to resist, he retired to Ray, attended by Mu`ayyad ud-Dawla, the son of the late vezīr Nizām ul-Mulk, who warmly espoused his cause, with all the adherents of his family. This support enabled him to return, and Khātūn Turkān was compelled to resign a great part of her treasures as the price of permission to retain control of Isfahān. All her schemes of aggrandisement were soon afterwards terminated by her own death and that of her son, A.H. 487 (1104).